by Candice Fox
‘Okay, thank –’
He hung up on me.
I drove, consumed with unexpected guilt at having pulled the wool over the eyes of a bunch of hardworking school receptionists and probably landing Zoe Miller in trouble she didn’t deserve, all so I could chase her down and mouth off to her for letting my cat out of the bag. It was a stupid thing to do. I squeezed the steering wheel, tense. She was a kid. What did I think I was doing? I was getting reckless now, trying to protect my secret, trying to get to the bottom of things that really had nothing to do with my search for Jake Scully’s killer. I needed to focus. Stay on the job. Exercise caution.
I saw Dynah Freeman standing by the side of the road and forgot all about caution.
Dynah was waiting at the bus stop at the far end of Crimson Lake, in a group of people her own age, I presumed heading in the direction of the university for afternoon classes.
I jogged painfully towards the bus stop just as the bus was arriving. Dynah saw me coming, and her reaction wasn’t one of overwhelming pleasure to see me.
‘Just two minutes.’ I held up some fingers. ‘Three, max.’
‘This is my bus.’
‘I’ll pay for a cab,’ I said. Dynah’s friends exchanged meaningful glances with her, asking her to give them some sort of signal if she was in trouble. She seemed to consider it.
‘I’m fine. He’s a friend of my mum’s,’ she told her friends, waving them off. The same brooding look I’d seen on her before came over her as she watched the bus roll away. She’d probably taken on the look at her sister’s funeral, and now it was a mask that came down every time someone mentioned the girl. She must have worn it for every Christmas. Every birthday.
‘Cigarette?’ she asked, slipping one from a packet. I took one, just to be social. ‘What the fuck happened to you?’
‘Car accident,’ I said. ‘I’m all right.’
‘I wasn’t concerned.’ She snorted.
‘I kind of felt like, at your mother’s place, you had something more to say to me about your sister,’ I said.
‘Why don’t you just ask Amanda what happened?’ Dynah asked, searching my eyes. ‘I hear you’re working with her.’
‘Where did you hear that?’
‘It’s a small town.’ She exhaled smoke. ‘You take a shit, everybody knows about it.’
I contemplated what this meant, whether she was closed off to me now as a tiny window into Lauren’s world, into what caused her to be in a car with Amanda that night, the popular girl and the school weirdo, parked alone in the dark.
‘People like to keep me updated on what she’s doing,’ Dynah said. ‘It’s weird. I don’t know why they think it helps. I can’t stop them. They text: I saw Amanda here. I saw Amanda there. Someone said they saw her with some big guy, black hair. Sounded familiar.’
‘I don’t know what to say.’ I shrugged.
‘What are you two up to?’ Dynah asked. ‘Trying to prove her innocent? She going after wrongful incarceration compensation or something?’
‘No.’ I squinted in the midday sun. ‘No. She doesn’t know I’m looking at her case at all.’
‘So you’re looking at the case?’
I’d come to the bus stop full of questions for Dynah, and now I felt like I was under fire. Her gaze tugged at me.
‘I don’t really know. I guess I just got curious,’ I said. ‘She’s a weird creature. I can’t decide whether she’s dangerous or hilarious.’
‘Uh-huh. She’s pretty funny.’
‘No, I mean,’ – my face was burning – ‘I mean in terms of her personality, not, um, her deeds.’
‘Yep.’
‘And then you said Lauren wasn’t the girl everyone thought she was.’
‘Yeah.’ Dynah sniffed. ‘She wasn’t. So what? What difference does it make what kind of girl she was? You know, I spend a lot of my time shovelling dirt onto Lauren’s grave. And just when I think I’m done, people like you come along and start digging her up again.’
‘I’m sorry.’ I found I couldn’t look at her. ‘I shouldn’t have bothered you with it.’
‘S’all right.’ She sighed, after a time. ‘It’s not like it hasn’t happened before.’
There was a man near my car. I mightn’t have noticed him had I not been avoiding eye contact with Dynah, ashamed of disturbing her sister’s memory so blatantly just to get away from my own troubles. The man bent and lifted a huge black camera, and started snapping.
‘Oh, fuck!’ I held a hand up to my face.
‘What?’
‘Nothing, nothing. Thanks, Dynah. Thanks.’ I turned and started walking away, towards the man with the camera, then remembered I’d offered Dynah cab money and started walking back. I stopped short, horrified at the idea of the cameraman getting shots of me giving a young woman cash on the side of the street.
‘Urgh.’ I gave a pained expression. ‘I know I promised you cab money.’
‘Damn straight,’ she said.
‘I’m. Right now, I just, uh …’
‘Just go.’ She waved me away. ‘Douchebag.’
I walked up on the guy by my car with barely contained fury. He was a thin man with dark curls and a short, grey beard. He continued snapping. Media.
‘Take one more photo of me and I’ll feed you that fucking thing,’ I said.
He lowered the camera and grinned, flipped a switch on top of the camera, probably going to video.
‘Blonde girls and bus stops, Ted Conkaffey,’ he said. ‘You just can’t help yourself, can you?’
‘I’m getting in my car, and I’m leaving.’ I gave him a wide berth as I made my way to the driver’s side door, so he couldn’t get me with any cameraman brutality claims.
‘No fun,’ he laughed.
‘How did you find me?’ I asked, one foot in the car. ‘Please, just tell me that.’
‘What? You haven’t seen the footage yet?’ he said. ‘Oh my god, this is priceless. Can I film you watching it on my phone? Get your reaction? Seriously, mate, I’ll pay you for the privilege.’
He started coming around the car. My nerve failed and I got in, slammed the door and locked it.
‘It’s all over the news,’ he said, swiping at his phone. ‘You’re gonna love this!’
I started the car and drove away.
I found Amanda at her desk with those red reading glasses on again, the usual crowd of felines greeting me at the door, meowing. I closed the door and checked the street, but there were no other reporters. My knees were weak as I went around the desk and shooed her out of the chair.
‘What? What’s wrong with you?’
I couldn’t answer. My fingers were numb as I typed my own name into a Google search. The first things that came up were videos. All with the same thumbnail image.
Me. Sitting on my back porch.
‘Jesus,’ I whispered. ‘Jesus. Jesus.’
‘What?’ Amanda crouched beside me, watching the screen as I clicked play.
Why don’t you take me through that day, Ted?
What?
That day. Why don’t we talk about it?
‘Oh my god.’ There was terror in my voice. ‘Why would she do this?’
‘Who?’ Amanda asked.
‘Fabiana, the journalist.’ I pointed at the screen. ‘That’s my back porch. She must have had a hidden camera on her, and she’s filmed our whole conversation.’
I scrolled up and read the headline over the video. Secret defence witness in Conkaffey case goes unheard.
‘In his first public appearance since his charges were dropped, Ted Conkaffey has revealed details of a witness never heard at trial who may complicate public perception of his guilt,’ Amanda read aloud. ‘A weathered, bearded Conkaffey spoke to Sydney Morning Herald reporter Fabiana Grisham about the possibility that the thirteen-year-old victim’s real attacker was in the same area when he was witnessed approaching the teen.’
‘It wasn’t a public appearance!’ I moaned. ‘It wasn
’t an interview. I was tricked.’
‘That sneaky slut!’ Amanda thumped the table. ‘When she comes around apologising I’m gonna kick her right in the taco.’
‘I’m dead,’ I said, scrolling through the articles. ‘I’m totally dead.’
Every major newspaper was covering it. There was an old mugshot of me on the front of The Age, the page covered with quotes from the video.
‘I almost had someone who could save me,’ Conkaffey laments.
I scrolled down and looked over the reader comments, all 1432 of them.
Jerry34: Anyone who believes this piece of shit deserves to die. The justice system is fucked.
Littlebittykitty: Palm trees in the background. Looks like Conkaffey’s moved north????
S8888er: Wood love to no where this is! Bring back the death penalty!
JaybeBaybe92: The people should rise up and hunt down this rapist dog.
Amanda got up and stretched, shoved a cat off the keyboard.
‘You never know, Ted,’ she said. ‘It might change the game for you. Or it might be the beginning of the end. All I know is, these things don’t last forever. Believe me.’ She nudged at me, trying to take her chair back. ‘In any case, I’m bored with your troubles. I want to keep hunting this superfan.’
‘I can’t concentrate on the Scully case.’ I flopped onto the floor and held my head in my hands. ‘I can’t even breathe. Jesus Christ, doesn’t anything scare you anymore?’
‘Not really,’ she said brightly, her eyes following her mouse pointer around the screen.
‘They’re going to hunt me down and burn me at the stake!’
‘Barbecued partner,’ she said. ‘That’s an interesting idea. Ted roast. Ted toast. Post-roast, Ted is a ghost!’
‘Amanda, please.’
‘Who will host this boastful roast?’
‘Amanda!’
‘You’ve got a gun, haven’t you?’ She glanced at me, not really seeing. ‘You’ll be fine. Just go outside and wave it around if a crowd gathers. That always works.’
‘Don’t tell me you’ve got a gun,’ I said.
‘I have some pretty impressive replicas,’ she said. ‘They go bang and everything.’
The cats seemed to sense my distress, and a couple actually rubbed themselves against me. Amanda fell back into the trance that the screen induced, hunting around Facebook for the ponytailed fan. I wavered between wanting to call Fabiana to abuse her, and the fear that she might record whatever I said, that any contact with her from then on would be poison.
It was becoming clear to me that moving to a tiny town on the edge of nowhere hadn’t been the best decision I could have made in wanting to escape my crime. I should have stayed in the city, hiding in the crowds, moving short distances now and then when I was discovered, like a bird in the canopy. The photographer who had confronted me as I stood with Dynah must have seen the palm trees and the marshlands in the video, as well as the old Queenslander architecture of my house, and made a wild guess that I’d fled to Cairns. From there, a determined media veteran might have started asking around the city if anyone could confirm I was up here. It’s possible someone had contacted Kelly, and she’d given me away. Or maybe my lawyer’s files had been hacked. Maybe Zoe Miller and her little group of vigilantes had spread the news of my presence further than I knew. Either way, at least two journalists had hunted me down. It didn’t seem like a huge leap for the ordinary man to do so. For many ordinary men.
‘All right.’ Amanda clicked her fingers loudly in my face. ‘Snap out of it, man. I’ve got a response here from one of the Scully fans.’
I dragged myself to the edge of the desk and hung on, my chin resting on my hands. My entire body felt like lead. It was a major effort to lift my eyes to the screen.
‘I’ve written to this chick asking her about the guy in the photo.’ Amanda pointed. ‘I think she’s the president of the fan club. She’s written back. Hi Amanda, The guy in the photograph is one of our Brisbane chapter members, Ormund Smitt. He’s a bit of a strange character, that one, and doesn’t always answer when contacted. Good luck in your search! God bless you and yours. Aww, how nice. She blessed us. Do you feel blessed?’
‘No.’
‘Interesting comment – he’s a bit strange. That’s not a very Christian thing to say. She’s colouring my perception of him before I’ve even spoken to the guy.’
‘He must be really strange, then, for her to have spoken out of turn.’
‘Let’s hope so!’ Amanda rubbed her hands together.
‘Ormund Smitt,’ I said. ‘Does he have a Facebook?’
‘No.’ Amanda tapped away at the keys. ‘Too mainstream, probably. I’ll search around and see if he has a website … He does. He does have a website.’
I dragged a chair beside her and climbed into it. When she clicked on Ormund Smitt’s website, DarkWorldRising.com, the screen fell dark and a loading symbol popped up in the middle of the screen.
‘Now this is exciting,’ Amanda said.
‘Our world is growing dark,’ a young man’s voice came through the speakers, low and sinister. ‘Around us, signs of the coming judgement are everywhere …’
Images began to flood the screen as dark music swelled. I recognised the track from one of the more recent Batman movies. Still shots of the hijacked planes hitting the World Trade Center floated by. The people falling. Refugees fleeing Syria in boats. Princess Diana’s wrecked car in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel. The ominous music was in tune with the images. They were in no order of content or chronology. A picture of an empty bathtub spattered with blood floated over a shot of O.J. Simpson being arrested.
‘Recognising the signs takes great skill and light,’ the voice continued. ‘It takes a trained mind to push away the blindness enforced on us from birth.’
Amanda watched as the introduction video came to its end with dire warnings of the fall of man, a smile playing about the corners of her mouth. When the video finally finished she fell into fits of laughter, rocking in her chair, her arms around herself.
‘That was amazing!’ she howled. ‘Let’s watch it again!’
‘Let’s focus on the task at hand,’ I said over her giggles, snatching the mouse away from her. ‘We’re trying to solve a murder, not entertain you.’
‘Oh, lord,’ she moaned in glee, wiping tears from her eyes. ‘O.J. Simpson …’
I had a quick read of the ‘About’ section of the website. It seemed mainly devoted to interpreting news and current affairs as biblical signs of the beginning of the end of the world. The most recent piece seemed to be on the refugee crisis in Syria. Warnings from the book of Genesis that man would have nowhere to run to escape his sinful past flashed on the screen in red. The whole website looked very 1990s, with moving pictures and plenty of capitalisation for emphasis.
‘Let’s see if we can get in contact,’ I said.
I wrote a quick email to Ormund, telling him I wanted to speak to him about Jake Scully and nothing more. While I waited, I looked around the internet trying to find any information I could on the man. Aside from the pictures on the fan club Facebook page, there was little to show of him. Amanda sat on the floor among the cats, not patting them but allowing them to walk over her lap now and then as she made calls to contacts about our suspect – police, other PIs based in Sydney, someone she seemed to know at the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages.
‘He has one assault charge from 2013,’ she said. ‘Similar sort of incident. He knocked out another Jake Scully fan at a writers’ festival for asking the wrong question at a meet-and-greet.’
‘How old is this guy?’
‘He’s twenty-four.’
I heard a car door slam in the street and found myself tense over the keyboard, my shoulders high. When no one knocked at the door to the office after a few moments, I breathed easy again.
I was about to submit to my fears and go to the windows, look out and see if there was a mob assembling, readying t
hemselves to come for me. But the email icon on Amanda’s screen started flashing, and a message popped up.
‘Oh my god.’ She threw the cats out of her lap and slid into the chair beside me. ‘It’s him! It’s Captain Punch-a-Lot!’
The email contained a single word: Skype?
Amanda switched over to Skype and sent Ormund a call. I changed chairs with her and shifted back into the shadows. The last thing I wanted was for the guy to recognise me from the day’s news coverage and can the whole thing.
When Ormund’s camera window opened, there appeared on the screen a thin young man wearing a black mask cut in half just below the nose. It looked to me like a Guy Fawkes mask that had been painted from its original black-and-white to straight black, the narrow, high eyebrows caught in the light of Ormund’s laptop. His mouth was thin-lipped, pursed in concentration. In the background, a concrete room, probably a garage. I saw Amanda’s cheeks lift as a smile crept over her face, and I kicked her chair before she could start laughing.
‘This is serious,’ I murmured.
‘Are you there?’ Ormund asked.
‘We’re here. This is Amanda. Ted’s hiding in the shadows here.’ She waved a hand at me. ‘Thanks for hooking up with us.’
‘What do you want?’ Ormund spat. He obviously didn’t like being bothered in the middle of his computer time. I noted some action figures on the desk, a can of Red Bull by the keyboard and some scattered bits and pieces of rubbish at the corners of the screen. A gamer? The response time from my email to linking up on Skype certainly suggested Ormund had already been sitting at the screen or nearby when he read my words.
‘Well, as you know, my partner and I are investigating the death of Jake Scully,’ Amanda said. ‘We’ve been on the case for –’
‘Your email said as much,’ Ormund sneered. ‘Whenever you start a sentence with “As you know”, you’re wasting someone’s time, just so you know. And right now it’s mine.’
Amanda twitched, glancing back at me.
‘Well!’ she said laughingly. ‘My apologies!’
